music person, here for memes & synths, asst. prof at baruch college, CUNY. opinions my own, etc. etc.
queens, new york
Joined March 2009
- Tweets4.4K
- Following839
- Followers591
- Likes5.2K
Pinned Tweet
Out December 2025 w/@ucpress : The Composer's Black Box: Making Music in Cybernetic America ucpress.edu/books/the-compos…
ted_gordon retweeted
The emergence of electronic instruments in 1960s America destabilized agency and subjectivity in music. Our book of the week traces how Cold War technoscience underwrote radical new visions of what it means to be a composer.
By @ted_gordon on @ucpress
buff.ly/QHCJJNm
This is…wildly incoherent? How does Astrud Gilberto grow out of the Dixieland revival? Why does Carla Bley get her own limb (not saying she doesn’t deserve one, but still)? What do the vertical and horizontal axes mean? Why is “jazz today” undifferentiated?
132
Music studies people: has anyone written about the racialized context/subtext of Lukas Foss's practice of improvisation? e.g. "I like to present the composed and the improvised side by side (but never mixed)" (from this 1962 article: jstor.org/stable/948499?orig…)
1
108
Another passage that needs.... unpacking? "A talented instrumentalist, even though lacking the gift of composition, can achieve a certain 'inventive technique' on his instrument. (This we know from jazz.)" jstor.org/stable/948499
57
how is this not yet a tzadik album en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zorn%2…
1
78
teaching the history of hip hop to people born in 2006 this week and my ultimate goal is to get them to understand this cultural artifact from 1983 (i'm not sure if i do, still): youtube.com/watch?v=HCBN7lyL…
4
164
of all the people who get name-dropped or referenced in the tortured poets department, why not dan bejar? the lyrical style seems so indebted to him: all the first names, one-off metaphors, unexplained specificity, purple prose...
165
Student comment after we watched David Tudor perform Cage’s 4’33” in its entirety: “it’s like eating soup with a fork”
7
144
How did the bros. Gibb manage to create one of the worst versions of one of the best songs Barry ever wrote? open.spotify.com/track/0w3BO…
92
